The Epilogue examines how trends from the 1990s continued to develop in the following decade. These included the growing civil–military gap, even as the American public lauded the troops as heroes; tensions between notions of the soldier as a male warrior and more inclusive visions of soldiers might be; and the question of what roles soldiers might be asked to take on. First, it explores how soldiers began to talk about themselves as ‘Spartans’, referencing their separate status as a warrior caste. It also examines how popular culture and the military itself began to increasingly venerate Special Forces ‘operators’, using these images to sell products as diverse as video games, fitness regimes and coffee blends, but also to reinforce notions of American soldiers as quasi-supermen, capable of incredible feats. Finally, it examines a cultural phenomenon that cut against the grain of ‘Spartan’ and ‘operator’ images: the ‘Fobbit’ – a term that refers to the personnel deployed to Forward Operating Bases but who avoided combat by remaining at the base, a description that then broadened to describe all sorts of personnel who deployed overseas but didn’t face the prospect of combat.

The US Army and Marine Corps’ (2006) Field Manual 3-24: Counterinsurgency is the famous known and controversial military doctrinal document in recent memory. While it replicates many aspects of the Cold 1960s “hearts and minds” counterinsurgency of Galula and others, it differs in its form, style, tone, and ambitious detail. I show how a large writing team from a wide range of overlapping backgrounds, working rapidly in a distinct institutional context, produced it. The mostly uniformed authors and their civilian peers drew on past manuals, history, social science (particularly organizational theory), and their own professional experience. The result is an assemblage of overlapping but distinct ideas, deeply imbued with the organizational and managerial discourses. While often described as politically pragmatic or expedient, I show the manual internalizes a patchwork of ideological material. Its ideological orientation, while in large part liberal and managerial, is ultimately complex and opaque. It’s influence and contentious status were nonetheless exceptional.

The personal costs of war — military dead and injured—are the most salient measure of war costs and the primary instrument through which war affects domestic politics. We posit a framework for understanding war initiation, war policy, and war termination in democratic polities, and for understanding the role that citizens and their deaths through conflict play in those policy choices. We believe that war support derives from individuals’ calculations of a war’s value and cost. High-value conflicts are more likely to be supported than low-value conflicts. Conversely, low-cost conflicts are more likely to occur andtohave durable support, while high-cost conflicts are likely to see rapid erosion of support when they are fought. We develop a comprehensive theoretical approach and examine these arguments with a variety of empirical methods in multiple wars, conducting analyses of tens of thousands of citizens across a wide variety of historical and hypothetical conditions. We also analyze the ways that military casualty information travels from distant battlefields to the homefront and address policy implications.

American military policy during the current century has been an abject, and highly destructive, failure. Misguided and failed wars instituted in the aftermath of the spectacular terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, have cost trillions of dollars and killed well over 200.000 people, including more than twice as many Americans as perished on 9/11. Much-exaggerated alarm after 9/11 made politically possible an armed invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, spilling over into Pakistan, to depose an unpleasant regime that, despite some appearances, had essentially nothing to do with 9/11. And in 2003, the American military was sent to Iraq to remove the fully-containable and fully-deterrable regime of Saddam Hussein. Initially successful at first, the two ventures ultimately inspired lengthy insurgencies against the occupiers. In Iraq, Iran and Syria, concerned they might be next, worked successfully with friendly Iraqis to make the American tenure in Iraq as miserable as possible. Insofar as the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were motivated by a romantic notion that the forceful intervention would instil blissful democracy on grateful peoples, impelling other countries to follow suit and in time to love the United States and Israel, the ventures have been a fiasco of monumental proportions.

Examines September 11 attacks and the Cold War–style response of George W. Bush. Assesses competing interpretations of 9/11. Outlines Bush Doctrine and argues for its continuity with Cold War strategies. Considers case for and performance in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Details first phase of the War on Terror and the traditional alliances that it relied on.